Phileas #20 – Happy New Year!
December 28, 2009 by Florent
Filed under - The Phileas Club, .Episodes, Featured
On this episode, your hosts:
- Patrick Beja from France (notpatrick on Twitter)
- Turki from Saudi Arabia (saudi on Twitter)
- Scott from the US (extralife on Twitter)
- Kerwin from the UK (kerwindatu or globalurbanist on Twitter)
Talk about:
- The climate summit in Copenhagen
- Stories of 2009
- Women’s achievements in Saudi Arabia
- Snow in Europe
And more…
Listen to the show:
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And to find out more about our wonderful hosts, go here:
Turki : A Saudi Life
Scott : FrogPants Studios!
Kerwin : The Global Urbanist
Using words like huge role and major impact to describe the impact of global warming and climate change really bother me. I can’t seem to wrap the immensity of the issue around the fact that the global temperature rise is .7 degrees, and the maximum impact that the Copenhagen thing would only allow for 2 degrees of temperature increase. That doesn’t seem very big.
I’ve always had a hard time putting the seemingly small variation as having a disastrous global effect or using such unimpressive numbers to create a massive redirection of the industrial world’s economy and the direction of developing countries. It’s the same reason we shake our heads at people that build fallout shelters in their backyard. At the same time people John Coleman (formerly of the Weather Channel and definitely not a meteorologist) is more akin to the homeless guy with tin foil on his head mumbling about the CIA reading his mind off his dental work.
That all said I do agree with most of Scott’s little rant, in that I think the issue would be helped on both sides if we could pull the politics out of it. It would also be great to divorce a lot of the new technology from the problem. We don’t need improved solar power or affordable fuel cell tech because it will fix the climate. We need it because it’s the next step. Make it cheap and make it cool, and America will beat a path to your door.
My favorite story of 2009:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/090916-color-blind-gene-monkeys.html
Which was really just a symptom of my favorite science research this year:
http://www.incrediblehorizons.com/brain-plasticity.html
I could be biased though as I’m colorblind.
Thanks for another great show Patrick. This has been a big year for you yeah? Congrats on a great 2009 and hope to see more from ya in 2010.
Fruitcake?
Wow, here in South Africa it tastes fine. (only people that are discussed with raisins and/or dates don’t like it).
Maybe an American thing, like they messed up barbecue, hotdogs, all pastas and hamburgers? Still make decent steak!
Enjoy the show.
I have just finished listening to Phileas #20 (a little behind as usual). I have to chime-in and cheer Scott on. Many of his comments regarding the news media and politics in the U.S. are sentiments that I have had for many years (probably more years than he has been alive). I am registered as a Democrat, but only because I live in CA where in order to vote in the primary you have to be affiliated with one party or another. Not to many years ago, within a few months of each other, my boss who is a die-hard Republican and my step-dad who was a die-hard Democrat each told me that they knew that I supported the party that they didn’t!
I have been listening to the Phileas Club podcasts for several months now and I really appreciate the opportunity to get a feel for what the rest of the world is thinking about and finds important.
The website I have put in above is a shameless promotion for my families beach house which is available for vacation rentals. I have only recently constructed it and am still figuring out exactly where to go with it, in other-words, it is a hodgepodge.
I look forward to the coming year with the Phileas Club.
PS: I forgot about the fruitcake! Scott — the problem is that most people alive now have only had commercial fruitcake that has dried out or never was moist. It also usually only has enough fruit in it to qualify for the name so you have very little and very small pieces of candied fruit surrounded by a lot of dry, tasteless cake. A good homemade fruitcake is very moist because you not only soak the fruit in brandy before making it, but then it is stored (for months) wrapped in cloth and doused regularly with more brandy. The pieces of fruit should be large and succulent and there should only be enough cake around the fruit to hold it together. I used to make a really good fruitcake, but it became very difficult because the fruit has gotten so expensive and is hard to find.
I’ve finally worked my way through all 20 podcasts and I am addicted to the Phileas Club! Patrick does a great job as moderator and I must say Turki has really grown on me. I loved the “_____ for Dummies” shows, especially Islam. I really appreciate everyone’s contributions.
Waiting for the next episode.. please hurry Patrick ! kisses